Mystery deepens as Greek plane crash probed

Co-pilot, flight attendant were among dozens still alive when plane went down

PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press

Published
5:30 am CDT, Tuesday, August 16, 2005

ATHENS, Greece — The co-pilot and a flight attendant were among dozens of people still alive when a Cypriot airliner plunged into the mountains north of Athens, the coroner said today, deepening the mystery over what incapacitated the flight carrying 121 people.

Fillipos Koutsaftis told The Associated Press that co-pilot Pambos Haralambous was alive when the Helios Airways jet crashed Sunday near Grammatiko, 25 miles north of Athens, killing everyone on board.

The pilots of two Greek F-16 fighter jets that intercepted the plane after it lost contact with Greek air traffic controllers reported seeing Haralambous slumped over the controls in the cockpit, apparently unconscious, shortly before the crash.

They said the plane's German pilot was not in the cockpit, and his body has not been found. The fighter pilots reported seeing oxygen masks dangling from the ceiling.

The bodies of Haralambous and a flight attendant were found next to the cockpit wreckage, said Akrivos Tsolakis, head of the Greek airline safety committee.

Coroners stress they have not been able to determine if the crew and passengers were conscious when the plane crashed. The results of toxicological tests to determine if they were knocked out by toxic fumes or gases, such as carbon monoxide, would take about two weeks.

Officials also said they found only the exterior container of the cockpit voice recorder from the Boeing 737-300, hampering investigative efforts into the accident's cause.

The voice recorder's internal components were ejected from the container when the plane crashed, Tsolakis said.

"The only fortunate event in the investigation is that we have the flight data recorder," Tsolakis said, adding that the box would be flown to Paris on Wednesday for decoding.

A group of investigators would search for the rest of the voice recorder, he said. American experts, including a representative of the plane's manufacturer, were providing assistance.

The voice recorder picks up any conversation inside the cockpit but saves only the last 30 minutes of sound. Because the airplane appeared to have been flying disabled for several hours, it was unclear how useful any recovered conversations would be for investigators.

The plane was flying from Cyprus to Athens and was to have continued to Prague, Czech Republic.

In Cyprus, police raided Helios Airways offices in the coastal city of Larnaca, near the international airport.

A search warrant was issued "to secure ... documents and other evidence which could be useful for the investigation into possible criminal acts," Cyprus deputy presidential spokesman Marios Karoyian said.

Investigators also were trying to determine why the pilot was not in his seat shortly before the crash. The F-16 pilots also saw two people possibly trying to take control of the plane; it was unclear if they were crew members or passengers.

The plane might have run out of fuel after flying for nearly three hours on autopilot, air force officials said on condition of anonymity in accordance with Greek practice.

After the crash, authorities said it appeared to have been caused by a technical failure — resulting in high-altitude decompression that rendered the people on board unconscious.

Aviation experts said they were puzzled by the crash. They said warnings should go off if an airliner suddenly loses pressure, and pilots are trained to immediately put their oxygen masks on and dive to about 12,000 feet, where there's enough oxygen for people to breathe.

"Even if the pressurization system was failing, it doesn't fail instantaneously," said Paul Czysz, emeritus professor of aerospace engineering at St. Louis University. "You've got plenty of time to get to 12,000 feet."

Three bodies remain missing, including the plane's German pilot, fire officials said. Cypriot authorities identified him as Marten Hans Jurgen, 50, from Berlin.

But the German daily Bild identified him as Hans-Juergen Merten, 58, and said he had been flying with Helios Airlines for six months but was employed by Direct Personnel International, a Dublin, Ireland-based agency that supplies pilots to airlines.

The German pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit said it had no information on Merten or his background.

The Cypriot airliner's pilots reported air conditioning system problems about a half-hour after takeoff, and Greek state TV quoted Cyprus' transport minister as saying the plane had decompression problems in the past.

But a Helios representative said the plane had "no problems and was serviced just last week." The plane was manufactured in 1998 and delivered to Helios in April 2004, the company said.

A man who claimed to have received a telephone text message from a passenger on the plane was charged today with disseminating false information and filing a false report.

A man who identified himself as Sotiris Voutas, 32, called Greek television stations shortly after the crash and claimed that a cousin on board sent him a cell-phone text message saying: "Cousin, everyone is unconscious. We are all frozen ... the pilot is dead ... I bid you farewell." Police arrested Nektarios Voutas, 32, late Monday on suspicion that he was the caller.

The report that the plane was cold was taken as a sign of decompression.